Hard Drives, good Manufacturers?

[Tifosi]

hmm, are OEM products, sold, then used... then sent back to the reseller, maybe fixed (if it was defective) then resold again, cuz if so im not sure i want to go through the agravation of having a defective hard drive

No, OEM products are new.

[Virtualbody1234]

I prefer Seagate drives too.

OEM is the same reliability as retail.

[Timz]

whats the difference in the way they connect, ie. SATA, IDE, ULTRA ATA etc. Are they all able to be used w/ RAID?

[clocker]

Most newer boards that support SATA have built-in RAID also.
I have even seen a board ( can't remember the model) that supports cross platform RAID (i.e. SATA and IDE combo).

Personally, I prefer Seagate drives, not only because I think they are quieter, but also because they have a 5 year warrantee as opposed to the three year industry standard.

[Timz]

if i have two different hard drives, of different size, can they be used together w/ RAID?

[bigdawgfoxx]

Seagate hands down....fast and quietest

[lynx]

if i have two different hard drives, of different size, can they be used together w/ RAID?

Yes, but your combined drive is only as effective as the smaller of the two drives.

If you are using raid 0 (totally useless IMO) you effectively get a drive twice the size as the smaller of the two drives, the rest of the larger drive is wasted.

If you are using raid 1, you get a mirror of the smaller drive on the larger drive, the rest of that drive is wasted.

The fact that you ask this question makes me wonder if you even know what raid does. If that's the case it almost certainly isn't what you want, so forget about it.

[Storm]

hmm, are OEM products, sold, then used... then sent back to the reseller, maybe fixed (if it was defective) then resold again, cuz if so im not sure i want to go through the agravation of having a defective hard drive

dunno.......... but if they are, itll be the same with retail.........

the only difference with OEM is that they dont have to put it in a fancy box (those things cost a surprizing amount of money), and no manual (like you need a manual for a HDD) and such......... OEM is for companies that build PC's (who dont give their consumers the boxes of all the separate parts)........

you usually get the drive in an anti static bag........, sometimes with bubblewrap around that....... but protected enough for shipment to you......

edit: internet acting screwy, didnt see these questions were allready answerd........

anyway, RAID is kinda useless of home users,

RAID 0 doesnt give any noticable speed increasment for home users (although lovers of the placebo effect will tell you elsewise), and if one of the drives fails, you lose ALL data on both drives
RAID 1 is very secure, but it costs alot of space (effectively you waste half of your drives)
RAID 0+1 has the benifits of both of the above, (very secure, yet fast) but you need at least 4 drives to let it work, and you're still effectivly not using half of your disks

check here for a full RAID guide:
http://www.acnc.com/04_00.html

IMO RAID (for normal home users) is useless........

[zapjb]

Check this out. Might be just some Seagates. But think recently they upped all warranties to 5 yrs!

[clocker]

No, OEM products are new.

Yup.

OEM=original equipment manufacturer

An OEM part is identical to the "retail box" version, lacking only the box and frills ( manuals, cables, etc.).
In many cases ( AMD CPUs for instance) the OEM part carries a shorter warrantee than it's full retail sibling.